


Death Becomes Him

by wearenotsaints



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt and comfort, I only write sad things, OT5, Suicide, cause I didnt mean it, did Harry come off as a dick?, sorry Hazza
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-18
Updated: 2014-02-18
Packaged: 2018-01-12 22:57:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1203586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearenotsaints/pseuds/wearenotsaints
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I need to make this hour last,<br/>so attach a beach to the top of my hourglass."<br/>-Bo Burnham, Egghead.</p><p> </p><p>or the one where Niall dies and the others get left behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death Becomes Him

**Author's Note:**

> This hits close to home. Funny how six years can feel like a lifetime.  
> As always, read and review!  
> <3

_Niall Horan, 19, of boy band One Direction fame, was pronounced dead this morning in his North London flat. His family, band mates and friends appreciate the condolences and hope for their privacy during this trying time..._  
  
+  
  
It's Liam who find him.  
  
An overstuffed take out bag from Nandos and spare key in hand, he lets himself into Niall's apartment. The sound of running water draws him to the bathroom after he calls out and gets no response.  
  
Niall is submerged in the tub, fully clothed, right arm draped over the side. His knuckles barely brushing the floor and for a moment, Liam is frozen; half expecting the Irishman to pop up, laugh crinkling his eyes, smile wide. For him to say something about the look on Liam's face. But he doesn't. He **doesn't**. And the water's starting to overflow from its porcelain confines.  
  
The Nandos bag splits wide open--like someone stepping on a land mine--when it connects with the floor. Liam claws at the tap, stopping the rush of water and plunging the room into agonizing silence as he heaves Niall from his watery grave-- _No. Don't you dare think that_ \--and onto the tiles. His skin, normally pale, is tinged with blue and his lips are a cerulean stain on his face. Liam fumbles with the lock on his phone before he remembers he doesn't have to unlock it to make emergency calls.  
  
He chokes on the words. On the consonants and vowels that make up " _drowned_." Somehow manages to get out that he's checking for signs of life. And Liam's never been so grateful for the summers he tagged along with his cousin to the pool where she worked. All the hours he sat watching the lifeguards practice CPR; insisted they teach him too.  
  
He's got Niall's head tilted back in a proper jaw thrust, his fingers slipping over the blonde's cold skin as Liam feels for a pulse. Head bent low, cheek almost brushing Niall's mouth, praying to feel a breath; to see his chest rise and fall. The operator's voice is tinny from the phone speakers when she orders Liam to say what he's doing out loud. And that's habit too.  
  
"No pulse, no breathing. Beginning CPR."  
  
Liam pinches Niall's nose and lowers his mouth. Almost wretches at the clammy press of lips against his own but fights it back. Watches Niall's chest expand and deflate. Expand and deflate.  
  
"Thirty chest compressions. One, two, three, four, five, six..."  
  
Liam grunts with the strain of it. Can hear Niall's ribs crack below the pressure but he still doesn't move or cry out.  
  
"Twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine, thirty."  
  
 **Two more breaths.**  
  
 **Thirty more compressions.**  
  
 **Two breaths.**  
  
 **Thirty.**  
  
 **Two.**  
  
 **Thirty.**  
  
 **Two.**  
  
 ** No change.**  
  
He's on his sixth round when he hears the sirens.  
  
 _"How long do you do CPR Liam?"_  
  
 _"Forever. Or till Emergency Services arrive or you pass out."_  
  
 _"Perfect Liam, well done."_  
  
The operator says something about the paramedics almost being there. Asks if he can hold on a little bit longer. Liam just grunts. His arms are aching and the bathroom tiles' gouging into the skin of his knees but he doesn't stop. Even when the front door crashes open and he shouts to give them his location. The paramedics spill into the small space the same way the fans used to crush themselves against the barriers outside the back lots of shows.  
  
"Twenty six, twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine, thirty."  
  
They move with a fluid kind of speed. Lift Niall onto the gurney; cut away his wet clothes; dry him off and attach the pads from the automatic defibrillator to his pale chest; slip a BVM over his mouth and nose, the seal tight; deliver the first shock; Niall's body jerking wildly from the electric current. A set of rough hands tug Liam back to the wall. Ask him how long Niall's been down--Liam can't answer--how long he's been doing CRP? The flat tone of the heart monitor is making it hard to think.  
  
"Nine minutes," comes the operator's voice and Liam forgot his phone was still on.  
  
Liam, whose always been somewhat gifted with the kind of perception that allows him to read people from their expressions alone, watches the wordless exchange the medics have with each other. The way their movements slow until they've stopped completely. The steady beep of the monitor unchanged.  
  
"Time of death, 9:07 AM."  
  
And it's as he sinks to the floor, legs, body,  everything giving out, that Liam begins to scream.  
  
+  
  
The day they burry Niall dawns bright and cloudless.  
  
Birds sing and people wake to start they're days. Unaware. Unchanged. By the deaths of others. Zayn flicks the butt of his seventh cigarette down into the stream of bodies passing below his balcony.  
  
When Death came, he thought the world would stop. Cease to turn. Freeze like the heart in his chest. Bow it's head and mourn with him. But Zayn learns first hand what bullshit that expectation is on an unseasonably warm September day. Nothing stops, no one stands still and he just wants to break something. Smash it to pieces like the glass shards shredding his heart apart from the inside out.  
  
He doesn't let anyone touch him, though they try. Because there is nothing but numbness permeating through his skin. A steady throb from the top of his spine to the arches of his feet and the only one he wants to hold him _can't_ , and Zayn thinks he would hate Niall if he could feel _anything_. He wonders if that should scare him, but then again, what is fear but the most basic and real form of emotion?  
  
Zayn doesn't have those anymore.  
  
They've been buried, six feet under with a nineteen year old boy from Mullingar and Zayn doesn't think he ever wants them back.

Not as much as he just wants Niall.  
  
+  
  
Harry, beautiful, tortured artistic soul that he is, stops speaking altogether. As though he can't talk fast enough to get the grief out. It lodges in his in his throat. Makes a home and bleeds out the corners whenever he opens his mouth to voice something-- _anything_ \--and gasps instead. Beautiful, tortured, sleepy drawling Harry, has always been selfish.

This new unrelenting heartache only makes it worse.  
  
He tries to write songs. Scrawls them out across the reams of paper scattered across his bedroom floor, but they blend together like rain streaks on a window and he gives up. Curls in on himself and tries to focus on breathing. The ragged rise and fall of his chest. The sensation of it hallow and all consuming. Because even breathing reminds him of Niall. Of how he must have looked below the murky surface before Liam found him and though Harry attempts, he can't even give voice to those properly. So the images just flash behind his eyelids:  
  
Niall, laughing;  
  
Niall, strumming his guitar, illuminated by sunlight;  
  
Niall, falling asleep in Harry's bunk;  
  
Niall, stiff and cold in a coffin;  
  
Niall, below their feet, turning to rot. Turning to dust.  
  
Harry gags on them till he's sure he'll suffocate. Until the only thing to do is pray the silence ends him before anything else can.  
  
+  
  
Louis laughs.  
  
Louis laughs and laughs and **laughs** because sorrow does something different to everyone she runs her fingers over. Everyone she touches. And Louis, who is the oldest and arrogant and wild, who thought himself invincible until proven wrong, cannot find it in himself to cry. So he laughs. Because he is terrified and lost and this is all he can bring himself to do. The mortality of it--of _them_ \--is a hard truth to swallow.  
  
A weight, in the shape of Niall's body, clings to Louis neck, dragging him  
  
Down  
  
 _Down_  
  
 **Down**  
  
to that place where he can seefeeltouchsmell the darkness. The one he worked so hard at filling with music and these four boys and love. So much love that Louis thought he could taste it. Till his heart beat nothing but LiamNiallHarryZayn, LiamNiallHarryZayn.

All for them.

Only them.  
  
But it wasn't enough. Wasn't even close and Louis laughs because the irony has replaced the love in his mouth. Tastes like rust and ash. Copper left under his tongue. Searing though his flesh like a forrest fire. Can ease it only when his mouth is hinged open, the unchecked, all consuming swell of his pain exploding from his chest just when he thinks he's reigned it back in.  
  
 _Laugh, so the whole world can hear it._  
  
 _Laugh, to remind yourself that you're alive._  
  
 _Laugh, because I can't._  
  
And Louis can hear Niall in it. The fading ring of Niall's shameless gales across the empty void they lowered him into. When Louis laughs and closes his eyes, Niall is there. It's Niall whose lost control.  
  
NiallNiallNiall.  
  
"Louis!" Liam screams, fist connecting with a sickening crunch against the older boy's jaw, and Louis continues to laugh because this time the taste of blood is _real_. Proving he isn't the ghost of the one they've all lost.  
  
It's this fact that cuts the most.  
  
+  
  
The four of them, the left behind, learn that Death does things to people and Grief doesn't fit in a pretty little box one can label. It  hurts and _breaks_ and there is nothing anyone can say to make them who they were before, let alone tell them who they'll be after. Least of all each other; least of all themselves.  
  
But Death and Greif, their hands linked--long time friends--loosen their grasps the more time passes. Breathing stops being such a chore; remembering doesn't cut like a knife to the back of the skull; anger ebbs to a dull throb beneath the skin; it's easier to wake, to sleep. Time passes and the pain becomes useful instead of crippling. The ache remains, always a little tender and raw, but no longer punishing.  
  
Life, surprisingly, goes on.  
  
They still don't understand why. What exactly drove the fifth piece of their puzzle to pull away, leaving a permeant hole in his absence. But Zayn tells them it's better that way and Harry nods, eyes wide, still selfish in the ways he can take liberties with the reasons in the songs he's finally been able to write. Louis curls his fingers into fists. Clenching and unclenching them to stifle the laughter, the need to point out how ridiculous it would be to know. To let Niall have at least one thing for himself, even if it is the only one that matters. And Liam, stoic, heroic tragedy that he is, never opens the letter that was taped to the bathroom mirror. Keeps it in his pocket until it's worn and creased, stained with his fingerprints and later, when the lessening of the guiltshameconfusionpain has come, he burns it. Scatters the ashes over the bit of earth where a boy from Mullingar lies, forever nineteen.  
  
+


End file.
